[1] The burning question: “Is really the end of the world coming or not?”

It is the start of December, where you and I are probably doing our own thing, living our normal lives as global citizens of the 21st century. Judging from the title, you and I both have various apocalyptical predictions bothering us at this moment in time. Is it December 21st or 22nd, or 2240 A.D. or around 500 billion years later in the future? I think it might be a neat idea to travel in the future and see for ourselves and come back if it is all alright. Back to the future, anyone? Obviously, this article could simply be a list of predictions that will fail in their prophesising. Nevertheless, what exactly is the bigger picture? What constitutes prophecy? Is it accurate and why not?

Firstly, let us explore the predictions in more detail. As you may have already noticed from the other article from my colleague, the Mayans’ calendar consists of 260 days period in a year, where after 5,125.36 this Great Cycle means 2012 is the end of the world. Moreover, the great French soothsayer Nostradamus in his book Nostradamus Vatinica Code of 1629 predicted the world will end in 2012, primarily due to man-made and natural causes of war, famine and plague. However, putting this into context, we evidently have always had conflicts, in order to resolve many diplomatic matters between countries competing or rising hegemonic powers. We also have famines and plagues due to lack of provision across the African and South American continent, or natural forest in Spain or other countries with drier climates. Thus, the question must be posed: is this really worthy of credibility? Sure, Nostradamus was an intelligent man, who predicted the Great Fire of London, rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and Hitler being the main protagonist of eradicating the Jewish community correctly, but this simply falls short of really believing it properly.

Likewise, you a plethora of other predictions: Jean Dixon with many predictions including that of a child impacting the world with great magnitude.

Jean Dixon, the contemporary American soothsayer predicted that a child of Middle Eastern heritage, will effectively spread new religions and almighty powers globally on February 5, 1962. This date was particularly significant, as this represented the 66th day of the year, having great importance to countless soothsayers and astrologers. It was believed that around the year 1992, this person was to have great effect on the world. However, apart from predicting the untimely death of American President John F. Kennedy correctly, this prediction really fell short of anything happening in the world so far. Moreover, there are other ones like the spiritual awakening of Jesus who will defeat the Antichrist and Satan sparking the Last Judgement Day, ultimately assessing whether the human race has been competent enough or whether there should be a New World or not. Additionally, there are many scientists who have predicted the year 500 billion to be the true end of the world, due to overheating of the sun and the earth decaying in inevitable destruction sooner or later.

However, instead of listing out facts and figures, it is even more important to consider the bigger picture. Apart from hypothesising with major mathematical formulas, mystical balls, one significant factor is definitely religion itself. Thus, let us explore this aspect in a theological light. Certainly, religious studies or divinity students would have a better understanding on this than myself, but prophecies can claim through vision and messages from God, upon his will. But another question lingers on, how legitimate is religion in this particular context in predicting the end of the world?

This could easily turn into a theological debate with reasons for and against to believe in religious ideals. Take the example of Christianity, with many possibilities to understand many flaws of the religion itself. Matt Dillahunty, American public and atheist speak from Texas, who argued frantically throughout his theological arguments. Dillahunty tirelessly opposed the idea of torture to justify human imperfection, where religion is a creation of something in order to believe in something. Surely, according to Hume’s moral and sentiment theories, the honest morality found in an individual should be sufficient to judge whether someone is right or wrong, and take action accordingly.

It must be said that theories of the start of the world is equally as flawed as the end of it, apart from a more plausible hypothesis in the big bang theory, where particles collided together prehistorically to create the Earth itself. These include the cosmological theory and the first cause essentially explaining God’s omnipresence, and the ontological argument seeing God as already existing in the world well before ours as human beings. Thus, why the use of religion, is it merely an invention and/or flawed? Why should we belief in it, seeing many of these predictions through this particular prism?

Putting into more contexts, essentially shedding from political, historical and theological lights, Christianity has always promised free will to a man and woman. More importantly, free to follow God or freely choose to sin, much to God’s contempt. This is significant, as this is hypocritical and contradictory, as everyone has a right to be self-determinate with individualism, liberty and justice. Why, then, should people be challenging each other in countless the Crusades, European wars of religion, the Israeli-Palestinian Wars, or simply be suppressed from the face of society to freely express their different views? Is religion there to make us believe in something so blurry and unexplained? Is human morality not enough to explain this idea of the right and wrong within our society? Is there really a need to write books after books based on the messages of God? More importantly, how reliable are these books as a true representation of these facts?

Additionally, God is perceived to have created human beings as imperfect, so why punish them for being imperfect? After all, we, human beings, were never perfect, then that automatically means, in a Christian sense, that we could have never sinned. Indeed, we can resist the immoral acts, but how can we shy away from the fact that we were, in Christian terms, created perfect? If we were all equal and perfect, how can we learn from our sins, our imperfections, our mistakes? Thus, in the bigger picture, if the belief of religion and the creation of the world are flawed, why should we apply all these theories on the end of the world regardless of religion or background?

Personally, I believe the only way we can improve the current situation is by improving our diplomatic situations as much as we can. This may sound like a liberal, idealist or utopian view stemming directly from Woodrow Wilson’s liberal philosophy, but surely with a co-operation to tackle the world problems, including those of human security – whether it is about the maltreating of innocent people including women during war periods (their passive roles are usually rejected in international relations), the economy or the environment to prevent increasingly more effects of global warming, the world should technically and logically last longer in that sense than the December 21st or 22nd 2012 deadline that is hypothesised. It may be a tall order, as many countries will always want to have more control over others in realist or egoistic terms, spreading spheres of ideology, territory and military weapons. But with the use of cosmopolitanism and universality amongst the world governments as much as we can to come together, surely we can bite the bullet and soldier on into more decades at least, regardless of all these predicted dates hovering on our minds as global citizens.With the Christmas holidays in store, I hope to write a few more articles apart from my revision. Till next time and thank you again for reading! It’s been some time 🙂